DRAFTED is an action indie co-op shooter for PC in which players control rough-sketch soldiers fighting a living ink entity known as the Blot across unfinished hand-drawn pages. Up to four players drop into these pages as giant pencils to hold the line, collect resources, and extract before the page vanishes entirely.
Gameplay
The core loop centers on squad-based defense and extraction missions set in a world rendered with cross-hatched 3D lines, splattering ink, and bursting comic text. Players wield eleven distinct weapons that upgrade from Mk I to Mk V, each offering two perk paths at higher tiers. Examples include a drafting-compass bow that pierces lines of enemies, a correction fluid sprayer that slows foes, a stippler minigun, and an eraser beam. Airstrikes and support tools activate by drawing shapes on screen, such as a Z for an ink strike or a ring for a margin shield. Forty-one doodles stack across a raid for persistent bonuses, while tools like a stopwatch or paper airplane occupy an active slot. Pressures can be accepted to increase difficulty and rewards. Sixteen enemy types each employ unique behaviors, from hiding behind stencils to swimming under the page surface.
Game Modes
Encounters include siphoning pages under constant assault, escorting a printing press, repairing tears in the paper, defending a field refinery, hunting bounties, and raiding camps. Special sites such as the doodle printer, red pen shrine, margin rift, and nib's cart appear during runs. Five zones each contain a boss with its own lair, including the foreman, old crease, the bog witch, the crimson colossus, and the wellspring mother. Defeating the final boss unlocks the blank page, where the unfinished serves as an ongoing threat, followed by the deep draft, a weekly four-page endgame run. A six-chapter story campaign leads to the final boss and takes roughly sixteen to twenty hours for most players.
Progression and Hub Activities
After each raid, players return to the last town on the page, called Marginalia. Six chapters of town jobs advance the story while providing opportunities to forge weapons, operate the inkworks factory, fulfill orders for cog, trade with nib, allocate skill points at the archive, and customize appearance in the dressing room. Some town elements hint at additional depth beyond the visible options. The game supports solo play with built-in scaling alongside online co-op for one to four players, including drop-in support, proximity voice chat, pings, a callout wheel, and emotes.
Is It Worth Playing?
DRAFTED targets players who enjoy co-op shooters with distinctive hand-drawn visuals and creative mechanics such as drawing-based call-ins and stacking doodle bonuses. Its verified features include a story campaign, multiple zones with bosses, weapon forging with perk choices, and a hub town for progression. Full controller support, Steam Deck compatibility, color-blind modes, sound captions, and a photo mode are confirmed. Because the game remains unreleased with no player reviews or post-launch updates available, any recommendation rests on whether the described pencil-and-ink aesthetic, raid structure, and four-player co-op loop align with individual preferences for action indie titles. Those drawn to the unique art direction and extraction-focused gameplay may find it appealing once it launches.
